Old Scrooge
by ChernobylGhost
Summary: HPSS short. Severus is nagged by the boy from the hospital. Severus ends up in a Muggle hospital twice, and Harry's been there his whole life. Severus POV.


Disclaimer: The characters belong to JK, you all know this by now.

Summary: HPSS short. Severus is nagged by the boy from the hospital. Severus ends up in a Muggle hospital twice, and Harry's been there his whole life. Severus POV. Mostly just his thoughts that haunt him, but Harry has one line. For the record, Harry was fifteen the first time and is eighteen the second (at the very end).

A.n.: I will do a sequel with or without encouragement, 'cause this is just too short to live by, yeah?

* * *

**O l d S c r o o g e**

I wish he hadn't ever woken me. He should have just left me. Why was he so interested?

He just couldn't keep out of my room, could he? _No_, I remember him once saying, _I'm all yours_.

All yours.

Not by matter of choice, mind you. When there is nothing but a rock to talk to, you chat it up with that rock, not sit and stare. Or, in his case, you sit, stare, wait for grumpy person to awake, and _then _talk.

For a public place, there sure were few people around. Didn't anyone ever get hurt anymore? What was _wrong_ with people these days?

If there had been someone else to bother, I'm sure he never would have come to me. Did he even ever introduce himself? I figure that he must not have, the boy had no manners to begin with. J_ust gorgeous green eyes, _the boy had confessed with such certainty that I nearly smacked him right then and there.

Green eyes.

The pillows were stiffer now. Beside the fact that all hospital pillows were stiff, his was most surely the stiffest of them all. Of course, I realize, the place for all sneering patients was the old bed. The Scrooge bed, the boy had called it. It would creek every time he so much as yawned. Not that he yawned, mind you. Not in public, anyway.

Day in, and day out, I was always the last to be fed during the nurse's rounds._ If you were nicer to her_, I recall him scolding me, _then you'd be the first_. I remember replying with something scathing, as per usual. And... he just laughed at me.

Just laughed.

Drawing was his favorite. I remember that against my best attempts to forget it. Why bless me with such a memory, when it brings so much pain? Why do I have to live like this?

I hate to think the thought. The... realization... that the boy will never interrupt my sleep again. Walk in, smile, laugh, and leave. I'm sure he must have done it just to frustrate me.

He must be gone by now. Gone for good. Why must I remember this!

I shake my head furiously in the privacy of my own hospital room. I swear that I must still be half-asleep, for me to do such a thing when I know that the nurse walks by every ten minutes to check up on me. Were she to see the wreck that I am in, I would surely be re-evaluated and sent to the third floor mental ward. I've heard the screams from up there.

_Stop being so mean_, I hear him in my head, and I attempt to repeat the procedure for a Pepper-Up to rid me of the torturous non-existent noise.

So mean.

_I've got cancer_, he had told me on the last day that I had did him. I'd known nothing of the illness, of course, being a wizard, and having it explained to me was the last that I remember of his conversation. Well, that and the quiet _Bye, Scrooge_ that he'd given me.

Bye Scrooge.

The darn boy that he was would haunt me forever. He must be dead by now. He just must be. I cannot stop myself from thinking on it now. I've nothing left to do but remember. Oh, and what I remember... he was so beautiful.

So beautiful.

I think I might have died for that boy. Or died in his place. Of everything that I've to atone for, I am glad that he is not part of it. If there had been a choice of hurting the boy and hurting myself, there's no doubt of which I'd now choose.

No doubt.

The evil Death Eater, the sneering Potions master, the grumpy old man in the Scrooge bed... was afraid to hurt a boy. His whole attitude appealed to me. His near-constant jovial manner was infuriating to be sure, but there was something about him that just made life easier to handle. I wonder now if he ever thought of me that way. Could he? Had he?

That way.

He had been dying. Right in front of me, he had been dying, and I would have given anything to stop it. The boy just lit up the room with an entrance, not even a word, and there was less gloom in my life. No one had ever even come close to that. Not ever had there been such a creature that could make me even _think_ of smiling. What has he done to me?

Less gloom.

And now he's dead and gone and lost and no more. No more- there's nothing left! I'll never feel that way again, I am certain! Why must life do this to me! Why can I not forget? Just let me forget it all!

But no, I can't forget. I remember still: how young he seemed. Even though he was doomed for death, the boy was cheerful. How could there be such a person? But wait... there wasn't, was there? No, not anymore.

Not anymore.

I roll over in my bed with the stiff pillows that the boy had used to fluff for me, and I beg my brain for a rest. I need to forget it all, I need to! I _have_ to!

There is nothing that I can do, there is no space for regret, not now. I had left the hospital before on my own. It is my own fault that I no longer have his presence to warm me, his smile to charm me, his laughs to brighten me. I had gone back to the monster to save my own skin, and now I would rather give mine for that boy's! Have. To. Forget. I have to forget. I have to-

All yours.

Green eyes.

Just laughed.

So mean.

Bye Scrooge.

So beautiful.

No doubt.

That way.

Less gloom.

Not anymore.

And then... I am saved! I turn over, toward the door.

"Back again, old Scrooge?" he says to me. Then smiles.

I scowl, and he laughs.


End file.
